The manuscripts of which the following selection forms a part are contained, with a few exceptions to be named hereafter, in the Sloane Collection in the Library of the British Museum, consisting of nearly one hundred volumes, numbered 1825 to 1923 both inclusive. A catalogue is given by Simon Wilkin[D] (himself a Norfolk man), by whom Browne's collected writings were first published in a connected form, as already mentioned, under the title of "Sir Thomas Browne's Works, including his Life and Correspondence, edited by Simon Wilkin, F.L.S. London, William Pickering. Josiah Fletcher, Norwich, 1836." 4 volumes, 8vo; the first volume only is dated 1836, Vols. 2, 3, and 4 being dated 1835.[E] It was here that the Notes and Letters were first given to the public. A second edition of the "Works," also edited by Wilkin, in three closely printed volumes, was issued in Bohn's Antiquarian Library in 1852. In the first edition the Notes on the Birds and Fishes will be found in Vol. IV., pp. 313 to 336, and the letters to Merrett in Vol. I., pp. 393 to 408. In the second edition both are in Vol. III., pp. 311 to 335 and pp. 502 to 513 respectively. The references here, as a rule, will be made to the 1836 edition, when otherwise Bohn's edition will be specified.
[D] Simon Wilkin (1790–1862), the able editor of Sir Thomas Browne's collected works, was born at Costessey near Norwich, in the year 1790. He came to Norwich after his father's death in 1799, taking up his temporary abode with his guardian, Joseph Kinghorn, a Baptist minister of note and a prominent member of a literary circle then existing in Norwich, by whom his education was superintended. On arriving at man's estate and being at that time possessed of ample means, he devoted himself to the study of Natural History, especially to Entomology, and was the possessor of a large collection of insects which, in the year 1827, was purchased for the Norwich Museum at a cost of one hundred guineas, a large sum in those days. He was one of the founders and the first librarian of the Norfolk and Norwich Literary Institution in 1822, also of the Norfolk and Norwich Museum in 1825, both of which institutions (the former reunited to its parent Library, founded in 1784) are still flourishing. Wilkin was a Fellow of the Linnean Society, also a Member of the Wernerian Society of Edinburgh. In later years the loss of the bulk of his property by a commercial failure necessitated his turning his attention to some means of earning a livelihood, and he established himself in Norwich as a printer and publisher; later in life he removed to Hampstead, where he died on 28th July, 1862, and was buried in his native village of Costessey.
[E] Some copies of this Edition have a title-page, bearing the name of H. G. Bohn as publisher, and the date of 1846, but differing only in that respect.
The foot-notes in Wilkin's edition, many of them very curious, initialled "Wr.," are by Dr. Christopher Wren, Dean of Windsor (father of the Architect of St. Paul's Cathedral), and were found on the margins of a copy of the first edition of the Pseudodoxia now preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford; those initialled "G." were written for Wilkin's first edition by the late Miss Anna Gurney, of Northrepps, near Cromer, Norfolk.
The first papers to which I shall refer are a series of rough notes contained for the most part in volume 1830 of the Sloane MSS., the first portion being devoted to Birds found in Norfolk, followed by a similar series relating to marine and freshwater Fishes, including a few marine invertebrata and plants. They are written on one side only of foolscap paper, the portion relating to Birds occupying folios 5 to 19 inclusive, folios 1 to 4 consist of two inserted letters from Merrett to Browne (see Appendix A.), which are printed by Wilkin in his first edition, Vol. I., pp. 442–5. The notes on Fishes are in the same volume of manuscripts, folios 23 to 38; but there are some irregularities which will be explained as they occur. The whole of the notes are very roughly written, and present the appearance of a commonplace book, in which the entries were made as the events occurred to the writer, being quite devoid of any system or arrangement. The entries doubtless extend over several years, but it is impossible to fix the dates on which they were made, the only internal evidence I can find being that speaking of the occurrence of a certain shark he states it was taken "this year, 1662," and on the next page of the MS. there is the record of the occurrence of a sun-fish in the year 1667; this latter, however, is evidently an interpolation. A few pages further on there is the record of what he calls a large mackerel, "taken this year, 1668," but this also is an addition. We may take it, I think, that most of the notes were made about the year 1662, but that they were added to on various occasions up to 1668, in which year his first letter to Merrett is dated. It has been suggested that these notes were prepared in the interest of Dr. Merrett for his use in an enlarged edition of his Pinax, but the remark in his first letter to this correspondent, "I have observed and taken notice of many animals in these parts whereof 3 years agoe a learned gentleman of this country wished me to give him some account, which while I was doing ye gentleman my good friend died," clearly shows that they were originally prepared for another purpose, although they eventually furnished the materials for his letters to Merrett, but who his deceased friend was it seems now useless to conjecture, although it would be interesting to know. The notes were certainly never intended to appear in their present form, and failing their use by Merrett which never took place, the information they contained was, as we know, of great service to Ray and Willughby.
Browne's correspondent, Dr. Christopher Merrett, was born at Winchcomb, in Gloucestershire, on the 16th of February, 1614. He graduated B.A. at Oriel College, Oxford, about the year 1635; M.B. 1636; M.D. 1643. Was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1651, and was made first Keeper of the Library and Museum; he was Censor of the College seven times. Having entered into litigation with the College with regard to his appointment, which was considered by that body to have terminated when the Library was destroyed by the great fire, he was defeated, and in 1681 expelled from his fellowship. He died in London in 1695. ("Dict. of Nat. Biog.") Merrett was the author of several works on various subjects, as well as of the Pinax, and a translation of the "Art of Glass" referred to further on. His Pinax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarum, said to have been brought out in 1666, contained the earliest list of British Birds ever published, but it is little more than a bare list. Copies bearing the date of 1666 are very rare, and it is believed the edition was burned in a fire at the publishers; but Professor Newton ("Dict. of Birds," Introduction, p. xviii.) says that in 1667 there were two issues of a reprint; one, nominally a second edition, only differs from the others in having a new title-page, an example doubtless of what Wilkin severely condemns as "that contemptible form of lying under which publishers have endeavoured to persuade the public of the rapidity of their sales." Merrett was contemplating a new and improved edition of his work when, as Wilkin happily puts it, "in an auspicious moment he sought the assistance of Browne, whose liberal response is evidenced in the [drafts of the] letters still fortunately extant, but either superseded by the more learned labours of Willughby and Ray, or laid aside on account of the perplexities in which Merrett became involved with the College of Physicians, the Pinax never attained an enlarged edition. Had Browne completed and published his own 'Natural History of Norfolk,' he might have contended for precedency among the writers of County Natural Histories with [his friend] Dr. Robert Plot,[F] who published the earliest of such works—those of Oxford and Staffordshire, in 1677 and 1686 respectively. He seems, however, to have preferred contributing to the labours of those whom he considered better naturalists than himself; and in his third attempt thus to render his observations useful he had somewhat better success. He placed his materials, including a number of coloured drawings, at the disposal of Ray, the father of systematic Natural History in Great Britain, who has acknowledged the assistance he derived from him in his editions of Willughby's 'Ornithology' and 'Ichthyology,' especially in the former. But Browne, it seems, found it more easy to lend than to recover such materials; for he complains, several years afterwards, that these drawings, of whose safe return he was assured,